Present Opening Marathon

Our Christmas festivities don't end in one day, our Christmas spans over a week's time(our house, Kent's parents Christmas weekend, my parents New Year's weekend). So on December 22nd, the day before we left for Kent's parents to spend Christmas up there, we had a little Christmas of our own, just the four of us. We had a special meal of chicken in grape sauce and then we opened presents. The girls were so thrilled to finally get to open these presents that had been sitting under the tree since after Thanksgiving. Kent slaved away for what seems like forever to make them the wonderful doll houses that you see. Someday the girls will really appreciate the dollhouses that their daddy made for them!

O Christmas Tree!

I just thought I would show a picture of our Christmas tree. The last few years we just had a little tree but this year we decided to get a new one and I am very glad we did.

Isabelle's Christmas Play

Every year our church holds a Christmas play that is put on by the Sunday school kids. Now that Isabelle is older, she gets to take a more active roll in the play. This year she was a fisherwoman and had a wonderful speaking part that had a great message about the birth of Jesus. She really loves being in the spotlight and I am sure she will continue to get more speaking parts since she is so good at it!

My Beautiful Girls

Okay, call me a bragger if you must but aren't these some of the cutest girls you have ever seen? This is Isabelle and Mia in their Christmas dresses. They both picked out their own dresses this year (yes, the two year old picked out her own dress, she has a particular style already, and most of the time has pretty good taste). Neither one of them wanted to go with the traditional holiday dress this year, which was fine with me. These dresses will be able to be worn a lot more during the year.

Air Isabelle

Starting in November Isabelle joined the YMCA girls basketball team. She had practice once a week and a game every Saturday. It was a five game series and it just wrapped up the weekend before Christmas. She had never played organized basketball before so it was a big learning experience for her. I think that she definitely has potential to be pretty good someday. She is not afraid to get in on the action and she really loves to play. Those two things, I think, will make her a huge success. And for selfish reasons, I hope she will keep it up because I love to watch her play. Someday when she is playing on the highschool team, I will be the loudest mother in the stand, wearing 15 buttons with her picture on them and a t-shirt that says something like "#12 is my daughter, or Isabelle's biggest fan." When I was in school, I never got those crazy mothers...now, I get it.

Ready? Okay! TRICK OR TREAT!

This year for Halloween the girls were cheeleaders. Just like last year, I made their costumes there are no store bought costumes in this house -NO WAY! How unoriginal! Isabelle was a Beulah Miner cheerleader in honor of my hometown and Mia was a Roseau Ram cheerleader in honor of Kent's hometown. We had lots of fun taking these pictures and the girls got lots of yummy candy.

Pheasant Hunting

In mid-October Kent and my dad went hunting for a weekend. They saw many birds, shot many times, got one bird...Oh well, they had a really good time and got to enjoy beautiful weather, scenery and good company. I didn't get outside in time to take a picture of the pheasant before they cleaned it, I was having issues with the grasshoppers (those of you that know me, know I am terrified of those disgusting creatures). By the time I got out there, the Pheasant was almost clean so Kent just held up the carcass that was left...

Just Smurfy

So Kent decided to repaint the laundry room and thought it would be a great idea to let Mia help. Him and I differ in parenting in that way. I love when my children choose "clean" activities that don't involve hosing or scrubbing down the kids, the house, or me. As you can see, she got more paint on herself than the wall, but she had a great time! Kent had to take his shirt off to pick her up and take her upstairs to give her a bath.

Itasca State Park

The Second weekend of September we went camping for the last time this year. Both Kent and I had never camped at Itasca before, but we had heard great things about it. The drive was not too long about two hours and it was great scenery most of the way. When we got there, we were told by one of the rangers that our campsite had the best view of all so we were pretty excited(the scenery picture is our view). The trees and the lake kind of reminded my of Kayla and my trip to Norway. It was pretty cold at night so we all wore many layers to bed but during the day it was perfect weather. We rode our bikes about three miles up to the headwaters were the Mississippi River started. That was pretty neat. The girls had fun jumping across the rocks. I will try to post more pictures later.

Mia and Isabelle Go Hollywood

On August 18th we went up to visit Kent's Family. Before we left Kent had picked up a gift for Kate's Birthday. While he was shopping, he found sunglasses for 50 cents each so he bought a bunch of them so the kids could play with them. This picture was taken in the car on the way there. They were practicing their "movie star with attitude" look.

Sesame Street Live

In mid-August we took Mia to Sesame Street Live. We all had a great time. Mia's eyes were glued to the stage the whole time and she even got up and danced around a few times. We had great seats, we were five rows from the front and were on the aisle.

Little Princesses

This weekend it was just too hot during the day to even think about going outside so the girls got creative inside. Mia wore her little pricess dress she got for her birthday and Isabelle wore her poodle skirt from last halloween. They danced around the house and had a good time.

Fourth of July Weekend

Forth of July weekend we went out to the north western edge of the state to Kent's grandma's farm. It was nice to get out the country and smell all the fresh air. The weather was very nice and we were able to enjoy outdoor activities. Kent took the kids out to an old abandoned homestead were they used his metal detector to search for treasures. We lit off some really nice fireworks on Saturday night and Kent went golfing Sunday morning. On Saturday the guys took the old tub out of the bathroom to replace it with a new shower. Not thinking about it before hand, I had no way to give Mia a bath, since all that was left was the shower in the basement. So we got creative and I hauled hot water out to the front yard with a bucket to the old tub and put cold water in it until it was a good temperature and gave Mia a bath. Nothing like bathing country-style!

Daddy's Little Helper

Kent was doing some work under the Kitchen sink and Mia decided that she wanted to help.

Glendalough State Park

Our first official outing of the summer we went to Glendalough State Park a few miles from Battle Lake, MN. We spent the weekend there and it was really a lot of fun. We rode bike everywhere we went and we enjoyed being out in nature. The camps sites were space far enough apart that we had a lot of privacy. The campsites were nice and the shower house was fairly new and clean. Although there was a few weather challenges, we had a great time and the inside of out tent stayed dry-and those our signs of a successful camping trip-right?

Reeling in the Bigs Ones!

It was amazing how many fish we caught! Of course most of them were too small to keep, but it was really fun to put your rod in the water and see the fish swimming up to grab it. Sometimes more than one would be after it. It kept us all entertained for most of the day and we had fresh fish with supper that night.

Ready to Fish!

On Saturday morning we woke up to a bright sunny sky. We went down to the boats where we had rented a row boat for the day.

Hiking

In the early afternoon we went on a small hike. It was very nice and peaceful. We saw a bunch of bright colored birds and there was a dog cemetery there that traumatized Isabelle. She couldn't understand why people would put their dogs there and if you asked her about our trip she would say to you: "We saw a place with a bunch of dead dogs and we went fishing."

Drowned Rats

Starting at about six o'clock on Saturday evening it started to rain...and rain...and POUR! Since we were out on the boat when the storm started to roll in, Kent rowed the boat to the nearest dock which was close to our campsite. The area we docked was not where we originally got the boat about a 1/2 mile from the campsite. Being that we drove to get on the boat in the morning, the truck was still down there when it started to pour. Not really knowing were this weather was going, Kent and I realized that we needed to have the truck nearby in case we had to bail for any reason. I bravely volunteered to put on the bright yellow rain suit and ride my bike to the truck and bring it back, of course that was with thinking Kent's manly caveman testosterone would kick in and he would say: "No, you woman, me man, me go, you stay with kids." But I guess in the thousands of years of evolution, I got the more sofisicated model of husband and he quickly and EASILY, mind you, shrugged his shoulders and causally said "Ok." Like I had just volunteered to peel the potatoes for supper. I was pretty nervous to go. It was just a short ride to the pick-up, but this was no regular weather. I peddled as fast as I could, trying not to think of getting struck by lighting and bursting into flames and I made it to the truck and drove it back. It was quite an interesting bike ride and I hope not to do it again! It's Kent's turn next time. The rain did stop at about 9:00 and we came out, started a fire and ate some goodies like nothing had happened. The kids were great, not a whole lot of complaining.

Time To Go Home

Glendalough's main campsite area is cart in only. You park your vehicle in the main parking area and they give you these large carts to bring your stuff to your campsite. Mia enjoyed riding in the cart with every load while we were unpacking and repacking this weekend. In the big picture, we had a great weekend and we will go back to Gledalough again!

Isabelle's Eighth Birthday

Isabelle will be turning eight tomorrow, June 23rd. We had a little party for her tonight. Her friend's Hunter and Monica came over and we ate pizza, played games, opened gifts and ate cupcakes. A lot of her friends are at camp at this time of year so next year I am going to have her party a month early when school is still in session. The three girls had a great time and were bummed when the party was over.

Father's Day

On Father's Day we went to DL. We got to town at lunch time so we ate a Zorbaz right by the public beach. Then we went swimming for about 45 minutes. It was just too cool that day to swim, but Mia didn't give up too easy we have to bribe her with shopping to get her off the beach. We then went to the flea market out side of town and that was really fun. Kent found an old radio that he thinks he can get running again. I found an antique vegetable bowl that is from the late 1800's and Mia found this hat. She loved it and didn't take it off the whole day after we bought it for her and she wore it to daycare the next day. She really loves to wear hats.